What was your first 45?

A facebook friend posed this question. She's someone i first met when we were in
6th grade (11 years old), and although we're both a bit taller, plumper, and have lost all our baby teeth, we both look the same in our faces. I can't say that for all of our classmates, and sadly, a few have died since our last class reunion in 2007, which she organized and made look effortless. Our next reunion is coming up next year, which she has agreed once again to plan and organize, and this has been the shot in the arse i needed to get back to exercising a bit more regularly than i have been.

I took the summer off except for kayaking, sailing, and a few hikes, but really, i do need to get back to it. Hockey is starting up in two months, and after hockey ends at the end of March, and outfitting the boat in April, knowing that the reunion is occurring in July will provide the oomph i need so i don't slack off again next summer.

Living in the US, of course, one of the comments to her question had to do with guns, and another asked, "What's a 45?" The rest of us immediately thought of music.

I can vividly remember buying my first 45. Karen Z and i walked down to a small neighborhood store known then as Pete's. We could buy candy and gum there. Those with a majority card could buy beer. And many of us walked there to buy cigarettes for our parents. Remember those days when no one thought twice about a
10 year-old forking over the money for a pack of smokes for his folks? My dad smoked Camel nonfilters.

Anyhow, on this particular day, Karen and i were going to buy 45's. She had an older sister Noreen who had stacks of them, and i thought Noreen was glamorous. She was just enough older where she did cool things like wear white lipstick. I was sure Karen had also bought 45's before, but i never had. So this was big doings. A rite of passage.

Karen selected "Leaving on a Jet Plane" sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary.

I didn't want to be a copycat, so i selected Bobby Sherman's "La, La, La, if I Had You."

As i read the titles others had posted to answer Ellen's question, i found myself humming tunes i haven't heard in years. Like this one:






Others mentioned Petula Clark's record "Downtown," and Tommy James and the Shondells "Crimson and Clover."  I'm going to have to visit for awhile on YouTube and take a walk down Memory Lane!